The man who lost it
In this article I discuss men’s experiences of divorce related life-crisis. My discussion is based on conversations with ten men who in different ways are connected to male crisis centres. I argue that an existentialistic phenomenological perspective on emotions contributes to a deeper understanding of emotions from a cultural theoretical perspective. I also explore some of the consequences and questions that follow from this approach.
First, drawing on a phenomenological perspective, I understand emotions as a dimension of lived experience. This makes it pointless to distinguish between experiences that are more personal (i.e. the life-world) and experiences that are consequences of structural factors (like discourses or culture). This means that questions concerning how different discourses are interconnected or the general effect of discourses become irrelevant. Instead the focus shifts towards the ways in which people feel empowered or repressed by discourses in different circumstances of life.
I also discuss the methodological consequences of a focus on the body instead of the mind. Does this imply that we have to move towards an ethnography of the body, totally concentrated on how bodies move in a specific time and place? I argue that such an exclusive focus on bodies would create a situation in which we risk to lose important knowledge of how people deal with and communicate their emotions through speech or writing.
